Page 96 of Wild Then Wed
I hope I get one of those. Someday. Even if it looks different.
I glance down at Lainey, who’s started playing with the ends of my hair, and ask, “Do you think I’m crazy?”
Mom raises one brow. “Just in general, or…?”
I laugh, shaking my head. “For this whole wedding thing. I mean, it’s crazy, right? Normal, sane people don’t do stuff like this.”
She smirks, and for a second, she looks younger—like the version of her in the wedding album that used to sit on her dresser. Hair looser. Eyes lighter. The woman she was before loss tightened its grip. “Wren, you’ve never really been either of those things.”
I start to roll my eyes, but she cuts me off.
“Do you remember that time Sage split her chin open on the fence gate?”
I raise a brow. “Not really.”
“You were maybe seven. It was summer, hot and dusty, and you were all out by the trough with popsicles. Boone dared Ridge to jump the gate, and naturally, Sage tried to copy him. She slipped. Hit the metal latch with her face.”
The memory flickers back—blood, the sudden scream, the way everything froze.
“You didn’t yell,” she says. “You didn’t cry. You took off your favorite bandana, pressed it to her chin to stop the bleeding, and held her hand all the way back to the house so I could drive her to the ER.”
I swallow, the edges of the memory sharper than I remembered. The bandana was yellow with little red horses. I remember loving it.
“Then you made Ridge apologize,” she adds. “And told Boone that if he ever encouraged something that reckless again, you’d hide his boots in the manure pile.”
A reluctant smile pulls at my mouth. That sounds like me.
Mom shrugs. “That’s always been you. You protect the people you love, even when it’s messy. Especially when it’s messy. You just do it. No questions. No expectations.”
She reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear the way she used to when I was little and didn’t want to go to bed. Her fingers are warm, steady.
“So no,” she says quietly, “this wedding? It’s not crazy. Not to me. It’s just who you are.”
And somehow, that lands heavier than any logic could. It’s not a judgment. It’s not a warning. It’s just love. The quiet, unflinching kind I come from.
The unconditional kind. The kind I learned by watching her.
The kind I give without knowing how not to.
Chapter 18
WREN
“You cannot bid nil with Ridge on your team!”
That’s Boone, half-shouting, half-laughing through his third losing hand in a row, slapping his cards down on the table like they personally betrayed him.
Across from him, Lark is shaking with silent laughter, one hand over her mouth. Ridge just grins, leaning back in his chair like the king of a very stupid hill.
“Bidding nil makes it fun,” Ridge says, stretching his arms overhead. “Keeps you humble.”
“You’renothumble,” Lark mutters.
“You don’t know that,” Ridge shoots back, grinning.
“Your truck is literally named after yourself,” I add.
“Exactly,” Boone says, pointing at me like I’ve just presented Exhibit A in a murder trial. “She’s not even playing and she still sees it.”
